


Goodness and Philosophy

by Germinal



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Canon Era, Extra Treat, F/F, Female Characters, Grisettes, mentions of painplay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-22
Updated: 2015-10-22
Packaged: 2018-04-27 03:57:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5032828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Germinal/pseuds/Germinal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"...<i>a cat can transform itself into a lion; that does happen</i>..."</p><p>Treat written for trickortreat2015, because the grisettes prompt gave me ideas I couldn't get rid of :). Any smut happens offscreen, and this is basically just Fantine's life not sucking so much.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Goodness and Philosophy

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Carmarthen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Carmarthen/gifts).



The departure from Paris of four young men had been conducted in a spirit of such gay spontaneity that they had left behind many of their old possessions, reasoning that they would be of little use to them in their new, respectable lives, and that in any case replacements could always be bought. They had taken the same attitude towards their four charming former acquaintances.

Two of these women were now in the garret-room to which Fantine still clung with the precarious grasp common to all the building’s tenants. On a dresser near the window of this room, the abandoned effects of Félix Tholomyès – a few _sous_ , a rattan cane, a discarded silk cravat – were gathered in a modest pile. Fantine gazed despondently upon them as though they had belonged to a recently deceased husband, son, or father. 

From a chair next to the other window, pulling a single ringlet through her fingers repeatedly, Favourite gazed impatiently upon Fantine. On another day she might have found it oddly calming to observe the way the dusty sunlight’s dying rays streamed down over the marginally younger woman’s golden hair, but at this moment her eyes were disagreeably drawn to how Fantine's delicate fingers were twined tightly together in her lap, giving away the agitation she was carefully keeping off her face. 

This had gone on too long, thought Favourite, and was getting neither of them anywhere.

“Come along,” she said, in her most decided tone. “We’re going out to dinner – or to drink, at least. You needn’t argue, since we’re richer this evening than we will be tomorrow.”

*

They settled on a wine-shop in the next street, the rain being light but too persistent for them to think of walking far. Since there was no one yet in the place who might feel it his duty and pleasure to buy them a drink, Favourite treated them both, for now, and they retired to a table in an advantageously placed alcove.

After the second glass, Fantine said: “I suppose it’s not the worst thing that could happen to a girl in my situation.”

“It’s not the worst thing that _will_ happen to a girl in your situation,” Favourite replied, half-seriously, her eyes scanning the room. She thought suddenly and briefly of her mother, and began to drink with greater purpose.

After the third glass, Favourite said: “My new philosophy, which you might like to bear in mind yourself, is simply to leave them before they can think of leaving you.”

Fantine looked at her silently, her expression halfway between a smile and a sigh.

After the fourth glass, Favourite said: “At least the meal was paid for. I mean, that was gracious of them. We must allow them that. That’s the mark of a gentleman, right enough.”

She looked grimly into the depths of her glass, as though divining the future.

“It could all have been a lot worse,” Fantine said with wine staining her lips, one finger tracing a hard-to-follow pattern on the tablecloth, and Favourite thought she sounded almost wistful that it hadn’t been.

*

After the second flask of wine was finished, they returned to Fantine’s room in unsteady triumph with a clattering of heels. Each of them beseeched the other, in between peals of mirth, to speak more quietly and to tread with greater care on the stairs, and on no account to recommence singing. 

With the door closed and her satin gloves thrown off decisively, Fantine crossed to the dresser and made a clean sweep of its polished surface, depositing everything of hers and Tholomyès' onto the floor with an almighty crash. She dropped her cape onto a chair and fell back against the wall, with a sudden soft cry that seemed unable to commit itself to taking the form of laughter or of tears.

“It isn’t,” said Favourite with a slight frown, “as funny as all that, you know.” 

She took a seat on the edge of the bed. “You might have liked to have a more pleasant introduction to these things.”

She leaned back and began to unlace her boots. A month ago, they had been new, but the streets of the Latin Quarter had not been kind to them. Rubbing at the laddered stocking over her aching heel, she watched Fantine stoop to retrieve the fellow’s blasted cane from the heap on the floor.

“Yes, you’re right,” said Fantine, her expression hardening like the glaze on a vase. “You’re right. In fact, if he were here right now, I’d – I’d –”

With a surprisingly proficient-looking twist of her snow-white wrist, she brought the cane down hard through the air, striking at the flanks of an imaginary adversary. Favourite stared up at her, astonished.

Fantine snatched in a sharp breath and swished the cane again, and then again, until her breathing was audibly harsh with exertion, her small breasts rising and falling just beneath the neckline of her gown. Her plush pink lips were parted and her lustrous hair uncoiled from its comb and swung about her shoulders, until her aspect was transformed from that of a dreamy ivory-and-gold Galatea to blazing Penthesilea at Troy.

After what was perhaps the tenth or twentieth stroke, Favourite collected herself, closing her mouth and looking abruptly at the carved medallion on the ceiling, or at her fingernails, which had unaccountably dug themselves into the blanket beneath her. She let her eyes fall shut and pictured instantly the quick pink stripes the cane could lay on white uncovered skin, imagined herself drawing up her skirts and offering herself upon the bed, awaiting the implement’s hiss through the air and the sudden stinging smack of impact. She gave a shiver and shifted slightly on the bed. She was familiar enough with being this kind of slick and aching underneath her silks - but really, such an unexpected source of inspiration!

When she glanced back up at Fantine, her friend was looking at her in an unusually keen and speculative manner. Her cheeks were flushed equally pink, the cane still held loosely in her alabaster clasp, tapping at intervals against her hip. That former dazzling smile of hers, long absent, was attempting a return. 

Favourite gave a slow smile back and raised one eyebrow in a practised arch.

*

“What you ought to do,” Favourite said at length, when she had slowed her breathing and was rolling her rose-pink stockings back up her thighs, “is sell that thing on. It’ll fetch a couple of hundred francs and you can live with fewer worries for a while at least.” 

Quite calmly, she sat up and began lacing up her boots. “And of course, I know you won’t forget your friend Favourite in your new good fortune.” 

After the third experimental evening spent with wine and Favourite in her room, Fantine did sell the cane, with some regret. Favourite reflected that life was, as ever, a series of more or less disagreeable compromises.


End file.
